This sentiment communicates new impulse to Mrs. Sliverstone,
who launches into new praises of Mr. Sliverstone’s
worth and excellence, to which he listens in the same
meek silence, save when he puts in a word of self-denial
relative to some question of fact, as—’Not
seventy-two christenings that week, my dear.
Only seventy-one, only seventy-one.’ At
length his lady has quite concluded, and then he says,
Why should he repine, why should he give way, why
should he suffer his heart to sink within him?
Is it he alone who toils and suffers? What
has she gone through, he should like to know?
What does she go through every day for him and for
society?
With such an exordium Mr. Sliverstone launches out
into glowing praises of the conduct of Mrs. Sliverstone
in the production of eight young children, and the
subsequent rearing and fostering of the same; and
thus the husband magnifies the wife, and the wife the
husband.
This would be well enough if Mr. and Mrs. Sliverstone
kept it to themselves, or even to themselves and a
friend or two; but they do not. The more hearers
they have, the more egotistical the couple become,
and the more anxious they are to make believers in
their merits. Perhaps this is the worst kind
of egotism. It has not even the poor excuse
of being spontaneous, but is the result of a deliberate
system and malice aforethought. Mere empty-headed
conceit excites our pity, but ostentatious hypocrisy
awakens our disgust.
Mrs. Merrywinkle’s maiden name was Chopper.
She was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Chopper.
Her father died when she was, as the play-books express
it, ‘yet an infant;’ and so old Mrs. Chopper,
when her daughter married, made the house of her son-in-law
her home from that time henceforth, and set up her
staff of rest with Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle.
Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle are a couple who coddle themselves;
and the venerable Mrs. Chopper is an aider and abettor
in the same.
Mr. Merrywinkle is a rather lean and long-necked gentleman,
middle-aged and middle-sized, and usually troubled
with a cold in the head. Mrs. Merrywinkle is
a delicate-looking lady, with very light hair, and
is exceedingly subject to the same unpleasant disorder.
The venerable Mrs. Chopper—who is strictly
entitled to the appellation, her daughter not being
very young, otherwise than by courtesy, at the time
of her marriage, which was some years ago—is
a mysterious old lady who lurks behind a pair of spectacles,
and is afflicted with a chronic disease, respecting
which she has taken a vast deal of medical advice,
and referred to a vast number of medical books, without
meeting any definition of symptoms that at all suits
her, or enables her to say, ‘That’s my
complaint.’ Indeed, the absence of authentic
information upon the subject of this complaint would
seem to be Mrs. Chopper’s greatest ill, as in
all other respects she is an uncommonly hale and hearty
gentlewoman.
